[Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine that made
timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore
because of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing
facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford, and CMU.
Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field
instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10 was eventually
eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the
PDP-11) when DEC recognized
that the 10 and VAX product lines were competing
with each other and decided to concentrate its software development effort
on the more profitable VAX. The machine was finally
dropped from DEC's line in 1983, following the failure of the Jupiter
Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some attempts by other
companies to market clones came to nothing; see
Foonly and Mars.) This event
spelled the doom of ITS and the technical cultures
that had spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become
something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut
one's teeth on a PDP-10. See TOPS-10,
ITS, BLT,
DDT, EXCH,
HAKMEM, pop,
push. See also http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.